Thinking Creationist: How Science Denial (And Its Undoing ) Transformed the

Robert, if you want to claim that something is science, you need to demonstrate that it obeys the rules and standards of science.

This means, for starters, that it needs to adhere to the basic rules and principles of mathematics and measurement. In fact, if it is to be considered Biblical, it needs to adhere to the basic rules and principles of mathematics and measurement, because that is what the Bible demands (e.g. in Deuteronomy 25:13-16).

As I’ve said before, old-earth geochronology does adhere to the basic rules and principles of mathematics and measurement. Young-earth “evidences” on the other hand are a completely different matter. Not only do they consistently flout the rules, but they then attack studies that do stick to the rules as “compromise” or “evolutionist” or “rescuing devices” or “speaking with the voice of the serpent” or other Pharisaic condemnations of that nature.

Anything that does not play by the rules of science is, by definition, not science. And anything that attacks studies that do play by the rules of science is, by definition, anti-science.

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And yet I will say it again, and again, and again.

Injurious to the reputations of antivaxxers, perhaps.

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oddly enough i was just reading about the sea peoples.
Your case is not persuasive in origin matters. its about history but still untested.
the Sea peoples aRE mentioned in the bible for those days. ITS BC by the way and not legal for BCE.
the bible says it was ships of javan/Greeks and Cretans. they did attack below Philistine territory and from there probably made a base to attack egypt with philistine help.
The details surely are lost in the vagueness of time.
The author of exodus knew better the situation and suspect Israeli investigation is what one should be wary of in ability.
Those are points aside from biology.
history being tested is not like science being tested. origin issues are like history. Thats why evolutionism survives. it can’t be tested but sells itself as science. only now is better opposition to these claims taking place. AS OPPOSED to the past when conclusions only were challenged.
NOW the whole legitimacy of evolutionism AS A SCIENCE of biology is under question.
Its a revolution.

Well your making accusations about the ability or integrity of creationists. FINE!
don’t deny it or pretend your just doing the obvious. your aggressively attacking WITHOUT providing worthy evidence for it.
Science is about rules of methodology before drawing/demanding conclusions have been reasonably made.
YEC hypothesis include biblical revelation. however organized YEC uses the rULES to back up the hypothesis. Then we use THE RULES to smush the opposition.
ID only uses THE RULES in backing up its hypothesis and attacking others.
In origin matters it leads to a lot of hypothesis with little use of RULES. This because of past and gone processes/events being the subject. everybody fails.
I accuse evolutionis DOES NOT use biological scientific evidence for its claim of being a scientific theory. its only still a untested hypothesis.
i said this to thousands and never had anyone show evolutionism is based on bio sci.
instead they invoke geology, comparitive anatomy/genetics, biogeography, classification systems and minor in species natural selection.
Yet nothing about actual biological processes changing populations in bodyplans for man or beast or plant.
Nothing showing gooey stuff doing stuff. ONLY AFTER THE FACT and then the inbetween process is presumed by the hypothesis.
close attention to rules would destroy evolutiomnism as a theory or even a possible hypothesis i say.

Repeating a accusation is not affirmation of indictment.
you must prove your case wortyhy to maintain the accusation or drop the accusation.
Do you know any lawyers to explain these things??
Analagy with antivaxxers is not worthy evidence but just more unproven analogy accusations.
Its like high school. its not the real world of men contending about intellectual matters that are historic and famous in Christendom.
I don’t care as I am confident it helps my side as ot makes your side unreasonable by normal stadards of conduct of human relationship.
It discredits your side and you. Not the accused.

Robert, I think you’ve seen my analysis of Answers in Genesis’s “ten best evidences for a young earth” before? Let me remind you that:

  1. When they divide the amount of sediment on the deep ocean floor by the rate at which it gets deposited on the continental shelf to calculate an upper limit for the age of the earth, that is breaking the rules because the calculation is meaningless.
  2. When they claim that bent rock layers in the Grand Canyon are not fractured, when photographs on their own website clearly show that they are, that is breaking the rules because it is flat-out lying.
  3. When they exaggerate the state of preservation of soft tissue remnants in dinosaur fossils, and fail to tell you that no-one has ever sequenced dinosaur DNA, that is breaking the rules because it is misrepresentation and omits important information.
  4. When they claim that the faint young sun paradox proves that the earth is young, that is breaking the rules because there is nothing about the faint young sun paradox that places any constraint on the age of the earth whatsoever.
  5. When they extrapolate the Earth’s magnetic field backwards from just 150 years’ worth of data, ignoring historical data further back and using an invalid extrapolation that is contradicted by their own models, that is breaking the rules.
  6. When they fudge data in their analysis of helium in radioactive rocks, misidentify rock samples, refuse to submit to peer review and dismiss critiques as “petty and nitpicking” without providing any calculations to demonstrate that the critiques really are as “petty and nitpicking” as they claim, that is breaking the rules.
  7. When they claim that radiocarbon in ancient samples are primordial when the levels are indistinguishable from contamination, and then dismiss the possibility of contamination as a “rescuing device,” that is breaking the rules.
  8. When they claim that the Kuiper Belt is both too sparsely populated to provide a steady supply of short term comets and then claim that it is so crowded that it must be smashing Pluto’s surface to smithereens, that is breaking the rules because they are contradicting themselves.
  9. When they claim that the amount of salt in the sea places an upper limit on the age of the Earth, ignoring the fact that the error bars concerned are far too large to justify such a conclusion, that is breaking the rules.
  10. When they claim that DNA in supposedly ancient bacteria proves that the Earth is young, basing their claim on a single disputed study, that is breaking the rules because a single disputed study is not enough to provide evidence for anything.

Furthermore, can I remind you about the RATE project? They themselves admitted that squeezing the radiometric evidence into just six thousand years would have raised the Earth’s temperature to 22,000°C. They also admitted that no known natural process could have removed that amount of heat fast enough. When they admit to unresolved problems with a young Earth that extreme, yet continue to insist that it is scientifically coherent, that is breaking the rules, because there is nothing scientific whatsoever about making up fantasy physics about accelerated nuclear decay on a scale that would have vaporised the Earth if it had any basis in reality.

I’m sorry Robert, but that is totally untrue. The age of the Earth is determined by measuring things. And measurement has to follow very strict and well-defined rules. Rules called “mathematics.”

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oh yes. i remember your blog.
The measuring is still based on unproven rates of measurement. by definition it couldn’t be measured. its past and gone. Its not math. its just untested hypothesis being presumed.

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That is simply not true.

The rates can be – and are – tested by cross-checking different measurements against each other. And I can assure you that it very much is maths.

You need to familiarise yourself with what is being measured, how it is being measured, and what cross-checks are carried out to verify the measurements, before claiming “just untested hypothesis being presumed.”

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He won’t.

This is the fellow who thought AiG would welcome his “marsupialism is just a small post-flood adaptation” theory.

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@Robert_Byers

Maybe you could try again to explain how the Sea People could be talking to Abraham 800 (or even 700 years) before they arrive on what we now call the Philistine coast?

For you to convincingly deflect the point I’m making, you are going to have to put time frames and dates into your response.

@jammycakes and @David_MacMillan, keep in mind you are trying to reason with the poster that said this:

The bible never mentions the brain. this because its a old wives tale that it exists.

Don’t set high expectations for fruitful results from well-reasoned conversation.

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Last Thursday is also past and gone. Can science tell us nothing about that either? If you wish to follow the omphalos hypothesis there is no stopping you because it is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable through any conceivable scientific study. But it seems that you are confessing to being a science denier.

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I can’t help thinking that is getting slightly off the topic of YEC and science denial. (The Exodus is a topic of interest to me, and I recommend the article http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2009/10/19/recent-research-on-the-date-and-setting-of-the-exodus.aspx#Article for an introduction to the complexities surrounding this issue, and http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2006/05/31/The-Genesis-Philistines.aspx#Article for a discussion of the Philistines)

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Not quite. Most of us don’t have as little opportunity to post elsewhere.

You know I was just thinking about how Galileo Galilei really lit into the Catholic hierarchy for their scientific ignorance. Quite the attacker, was Galileo. And sure enough, his injudicious criticisms set back astronomy for several centuries.

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I think we discussed this before. any cross checking fails if the particular dating methods are all questioned and of the same family.
You can not check these old dates by methods that also are unproven.
anyways you are admitting a biology hypothesis, claimed theory, is not based on biology. but on unrelated geology/physics dating things.
any measurement only works after its settled it doesn’t change its essence that must be constant. Who can prove that from the past.

My example I use is in archeology where they examine skeletons of people.
they determine, past puberity, the age ONLY by decay of the body. yet this demands a decay based on present decay rates. however if the ages opf men/creatures were longer lived, as the bible says, before/slightly after the flood then any bones from then would be wrongly aged if using our present decay rate.
Thats why dino bones are wrongly aged and why they are so big. they were hundreds of years ol old.
( Dinosaur is not my classification but to be understood etc etc)

i’m not going to say science can say nothing about invisible past and gone processes/events. yet it must work hard. Its not like science usual job of dealing with visable(ish) things. Repeatable things.
science probably doesn’t recognize thursdays and last ones but does recognize time.
Its history that can tell about last thursday

It’s unbelievable how wrong that is…

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@DarrenG,

So… I can’t tell if you are interested in the theory of when Exodus occurred… or if it would just throw your approach off balance.

Let me know!

Case in point. The catholic church attacked him, I understand, and THEY were in the wrong.
They attacked more and they lost.
Its this way today.
Its creationist(s) that are more, pound for pound too, attacked then otherwise.
Creationists don’t attack the others as not credible thinkers. jUst wrong, and incompetent, and unimaginative, and missing gods basic manuel.